A Sneeze to Die For

by Teresa Trent

  Alan Shaw had been an obnoxious little man, and instead of trying to find one person he made angry, Nora had to assume the police were overwhelmed with weeding through scores of people. The last she saw the tenacious reporter alive he had been spewing hatred toward Evangeline and Doug. Did Mr. Shaw have a crush on Evangeline? He had acted like seeing her and Doug together was a terrible thing. Was that because he was a jealous admirer? Had he been like Izzy, just in male form?

  Evangeline might write a heck of a mystery, but the idea of her having two men fighting over her at the age of sixty-five was pretty out there. She looked like somebody’s grandmother. There was something about the evening before that struck her as out of place. It was like when Nora methodically straightened the chairs in the dining room during her evening shift. Each one had to be centered on their square of the table. She knew it was part of her history as a personal organizer, but there was a sense of peace at seeing everything in its place. Thinking back on the scene with Izzy and Alan interrupting Evangeline’s dinner something was not aligned correctly. She called Tuck and left a message.

  A truck horn beeped from the alley, and after stowing the luggage, Nora speed walked to the service entrance hoping it was Moore Foods. Wiley joined her matching his pace to hers.

  A pleasantly plump woman jumped down from the passenger side of the truck cab. “Are you Nora?”

  “I sure am. Are you Val?”

  “Guilty.” When she smiled, little dimples played in the corners of her cheeks. Nora instantly liked her.

  Wiley bowed to her politely in two jerky motions and then ran to the back of the truck, his excitement taking over his ability to speak.

  “That was our chef. He’s very glad to see you.”

  Val shook her head. “I’m so sorry about what happened to you.” She leaned closer and spoke in a whisper. “You were right. Your driver here has been up to something. He wasn’t very happy when I told him I wanted to ride along for this little run.”

  Nora nodded in agreement. “If I had to guess, I would say he’s getting a little cash under the table from Jumbo Gumbos to slow our deliveries.”

  Val edged closer, her eyes widening in astonishment. “Do you have any proof?”

  “Not a bit. It’s just a feeling,” Nora answered. There was probably almost no way to prove it. Like Hickelby’s, she was sure Jumbo Jim worked on a cash basis.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch him,” Val straightened up as the driver came around the corner with several boxes on a dolly.

  “Right through here, in case you’ve forgotten after all this time,” Wiley directed the man to the kitchen, his thin frame all business now.

  Val nodded and said, “Would you mind if I came inside? I haven’t been to the Tunie in years.”

  Nora took on the role of hostess. “Of course. Let me show you around. We’ve made some improvements.”

  Val smiled once again displaying her dimples. “Oh, you don’t need to show me around. I know where everything is. I used to work here, you know.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure. Mr. Tunie hired me to wait tables in the dining room. I also doubled for missing maids on occasion. Not my favorite job to be sure. People are pigs.” Val slowed her step and gazed at the wall of mementos. “I loved this place. It was a part of my childhood, I guess. I was sorry to see Mr. Tunie sell it.”

  She fingered the edge of the couches and then peeked into the dining room. She turned abruptly. “Is the ballroom still there?”

  The ballroom, as she put it, had now turned into a banquet and conference room. Nora and Marty had booked meetings and even classes. Occasionally, though, there was still dancing attached to an event. The Tunie was becoming especially popular with weddings.

  “That’s the thing about this place. Everyone has a history here,” Val opened the doors to the room where Evangeline Cartwright would deliver her keynote speech in a few hours. “Beautiful. It feels like coming home.”

  The phone rang from behind the desk. Nora excused herself and quickly answered, “Front desk.”

  “Val? Do I see Val in my lobby?” Marty had been watching them from her Webcam again.

  “Yes. Do you know her? She came over with the delivery from Moore foods. Did you want to speak with her?” Nora inquired.

  “I sure did. That girl still owes me five bucks and a Snickers bar.”

  Nora turned to Val. “It’s for you.”

  “Me? Work usually calls me on my cell phone. I wonder if the ringer is off?” Val said.

  “It’s not work. It’s Marty Reynolds.”

  “Marty!” Val ran to the offered phone. “Marty? Is it really you? Where are you?”

  Nora watched as Val and Marty began to relive old times over the phone. It seemed that when Val worked at the Tunie so did Marty. As Nora listened, she also picked up on the fact that Val had just moved back to Piney Woods with her children after a divorce. Val hung up and turned to Nora.

  “What a wonderful surprise. I can’t believe she owns the place.” Val said not realizing that Nora also had a part of the Tunie.

  “So, you just moved back to town with your children? I couldn’t help overhearing.” Normally she would have stepped away and given a guest privacy when they were on the phone, but something had held her there.

  “Sure did. Two rascally boys. What I don’t have any more is a rascally husband. I have custody of the kids for the school year. He gets them in the summer. When I decided to move, there was just one place I wanted to go.”

  “Piney Woods?”

  “You bet. Now I find out my new job is to deliver food to the Tunie. It couldn’t get any better than that.”

  Nora agreed, “You have no idea how happy I am to hear it.”

  “Yeah, well those late deliveries you’ve been having have just become a thing of the past.”

  “Thanks to you our problem seems to be solved. This convention started out roughly but now I think the worst part might be over.”

  “Only because you hopped on it. What would Marty do without her little helper?” Val remarked.

  Nora smiled and dug her toes into the carpet. She knew she should correct Val at this point, but didn’t. She would tell her eventually. She was just glad her presence had put a spark back into Marty.

  Chapter 11

  W

  While Nora and Val got the shipment of food situated, she spoke of some of the shenanigans she had been uncovering at Moore foods. She wasn’t happy there and when Nora was deep in discussion with Wiley and Cesar about substitutions, she excused herself. When Nora returned to the front desk, Dominic Fazio was holding up an application. The Tunie Hotel had been written up several times for possible hauntings and when Nora and Marty put an ad in the paper for a clerk, Dominic jumped at the chance. At forty years old he remained unmarried, with a long history of serial dating. He told Max one night that he was happy being a perpetual bachelor. The Tunie Hotel though did offer him a place to conduct his paranormal investigations. Nora still wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not. If he found a ghost, they might get extra bookings from ghost hunter types but on the flipside people might avoid a “haunted hotel”. Either way, he was a pretty good employee.

  “You’re not going to believe this. Somebody actually applied to work here. Will wonders never cease.”

  Nora walked forward and started reading through the neatly lettered answers on the form. An application from someone off the street was an oddity because when Nora came to work for the Tunie Hotel, it was in such a state of disrepair that no one in town even knew the place was open. Back then, no one wanted to hitch their wagon to the failing hotel with the possibility of not having a job the next week. Not only was it a surprise to get the application, but it was a bit of a shock it was from the hotel restaurant’s newfound friend at Moore Foods. Nora instantly liked Val and after getti
ng so much avoidance and subterfuge from their wholesale food supplier, it was wonderful to find someone who was there for the in-house restaurant. She hadn’t expected that Val would apply for work at the hotel. As Nora glanced at the application, a tiny anxiety rose in her chest. Val had attended the hotel and restaurant school at the University of Houston. Not only that, but she had worked in a couple of the big hotels in downtown Dallas. With all the problems that were occurring during this convention, would Val have let so many catastrophes explode at the same time? Would there have been so many things beyond Val’s control? After looking at Val’s track record and her references, Nora highly doubted it.

  “So, what should we do with it? Should I get her on the horn, so she can come back for an interview?” Dominic asked.

  “Let me hold on to this so that I can show it to Marty later,” Nora answered. Whether she showed it to her was more of a question than a statement in Nora’s mind. What would it be like working with two people who were so instantly close to each other again? Nora welcomed the idea of hiring somebody competent, but the insecurity that she was feeling was overwhelming her good judgment. She was ashamed the thought of hiding the application was bouncing around in her head.

  You know what? I might lose it. I’ll just stick it in the drawer.” Nora put the application under the stack of empty ones.

  “Don’t you want to put that on the top?”

  “Uh, confidentiality.”

  Dominic couldn’t hide his confusion but took Nora for her word. “Sure. Confidentiality. Would hate for someone to accidently see her address or something. Aye?”

  “It would be awful.” Nora was thankful he seemed to accept her explanation. It might be just what they needed to have someone with hotel management education on their staff. Marty hadn’t had any kind of training, but she seemed to carry off managing the hotel without it. It wasn’t like that in the beginning. Marty broke down more than once and confessed she felt like she made a giant mistake scooping up the Tunie at a bargain price. She feared she would lose everything she had ever worked for, and now Nora worried that sinking her inheritance into this place might have been her mistake.

  “And what do we do with this guy’s luggage?” Dominic pointed to the two abandoned bags underneath the check-in desk. Alan Shaw’s luggage remained where Nora had dropped it.

  “I forgot about those. I’ll grab them.” Nora dragged the bags into the business office situated just off the lobby. She had also forgotten to call Tuck but wanted to go through one more time. She was sure he was the source of the one-star ratings on Rate My Hotel. After that, she needed to deal with Camille Martin-Ortega. She was starting to feel guilty for asking Marty to go out on a limb with this thing. Now here they were amid the convention with a murder investigation and a distinct possibility that the hotel would be further in the red after so much work, money and time invested.

  Nora stowed the bags in the office. Looking out to the lobby to make sure no one needed her, she quietly closed the door. Along with Alan Shaw’s luggage was a small laptop computer that she had seen him carry on the first day. Nora started the computer up but found it was password protected. The wallpaper on his laptop screen was a scene from the movie Woodward and Bernstein, the investigative reporters who broke the story on the Watergate scandal back in the seventies.

  She tried several passwords but time after time a little box popped up with a message telling her it was invalid.

  Tuck put his head in the door, causing her to jump. She quickly closed the laptop. She smiled, having time alone with Tuck in the middle of the day was an unexpected thrill.

  “Am I interrupting something?” He came closer, slipping his hand around her waist. Nora was relieved he didn’t seem to have picked up on what she was doing. Maybe he thought it was her laptop?

  “No. Just work.”

  He glanced at the desk. “What have you got there? Did you get a new laptop?” One thing about having a cop for her boyfriend, he was always observant. He knew what Nora’s laptop looked like and this was not it. Considering the alternative first, Nora decided to tell the truth. “Bert Hickelby dropped off Alan Shaw’s luggage for me to ship back to his next of kin this morning. I was about to call you.”

  He drew back. “Wasn’t his luggage here?”

  “No. He wasn’t staying at our hotel. He was staying at Hickelby’s Motor Lodge. Remember, I told you. He thought he made a reservation, but it wasn’t in our system. He blamed it on us, but we had no record of a reservation.”

  “And these are his bags?” Tuck now surveyed the bags in a proprietary manner. “I can’t believe my guys missed that.”

  “Bert Hickelby couldn’t wait to get rid of them. He didn’t want to pay the cost of shipping these things to his family.”

  Tuck pulled out his cell phone and began a call. “Hey, did you guys get any luggage for Alan Shaw?” Tuck’s face began to register annoyance. Clearly, they had not tracked down Shaw’s luggage. “The reason why I’m asking is that I have it right here in front of me. It was at Hickelby’s Motor Lodge, and you guys missed this. I’m bringing it over right now.” Tuck ended the conversation and returned to Nora.

  “Good news. You don’t have to deal with trying to ship these bags off to Mr. Shaw’s family.”

  Nora was happy to cooperate with the police, especially this policeman, but if she had to relinquish the bags, that would mean that she would have a time proving that Alan Shaw was the one-star guest.

  “Something wrong?” Tuck asked.

  “No. Well, yes. We have been receiving some very bad ratings online, and I was trying to figure out if Mr. Shaw might have left the reviews. Is there any way I could keep them another day?”

  “No. These bags are police evidence.”

  Nora reached out and slipped her fingers under Tuck’s collar as she spoke. “Come on. What harm would it do?”

  “None I guess, but it is not police policy to keep an accident victim’s things so that a certain hotelier, no matter how lovely, can rifle through them.”

  “Ah, come on Tuck,” she gave him a pouty smile.

  “No. And that’s final.”

  Nora felt like a child who just had her hand taken out of the cookie jar. “Okay. Maybe if you get into his computer you could check for something that looks like a review?”

  Tuck’s grin was warm. “I’ll be on the lookout.” He leaned forward and gave her a kiss that had Nora’s head spinning. “You do know that I think you’re doing an excellent job with the hotel?”

  Nora appreciated Tuck’s praise, but losing Alan Shaw’s laptop was going to slow down her efforts of eliminating the damaging reviews.

  Chapter 12

  W

  After Tuck left with the luggage of the unlucky Mr. Shaw, and with only an hour to go until the keynote speech, a surge of panic raced through Nora. Once again, her worries started to get the better of her.

  True, they had a hotel full of people, but now these guests wanted a fifty percent discount. The well-planned convention she had dreamed of was quickly slipping into a nightmare. Val’s application was still hidden in a drawer at the front desk. Nora’s pride was getting the better of her. She promised herself she would show Marty Val’s application the next time she spoke with her as well as coming clean with the problems going on with the convention. If she could erase the one-star reviews, then she could also destroy the rationale behind Mrs. Martin-Ortega’ s request for a deep discount.

  Nora looked up Rate My Hotel on the office computer. How had she’d never been aware of this site before? Someone who had been to hotel school probably learned about it on the first day, she thought sourly. She typed in the Tunie Hotel in Piney Woods, Texas and as she combed through each paragraph of vitriol, it was obvious to her Alan Shaw was a born critic. His beautifully written reviews illustrated things like moldy bathrooms and stained carpets on the upper floors.
He’d never been inside a guest room, but from the tone of the reviews it sounded as if he had lived in the hotel for a month. He should have been a novelist because the scathing reviews were pure fiction. If Nora had to guess, he was describing Hickelby’s Motor Lodge.

  When she pulled up the “Contact Us” page, there was a phone number for their offices. She quickly dialed it.

  “Rate Your Hotel. How may I help you?” A cheery voice answered.

  “Yes, I was wondering what you can do if somebody falsely submits reviews to your site?”

  There was an audible sigh on the other end as if this person had taken this phone call too many times. She responded in a rote fashion. “If you feel that the review was in error, you can contest it.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “To contest a review, you need to prove that the reviewer is lying and operating in a malicious way.”

  Her answer was so succinct Nora suspected she was reading it off a script.

  “Just how do most people go about proving that kind of thing?”

  “Well … Most people can’t prove something like that. We are a site built on opinions. It’s kind of hard to contest somebody’s opinion. If your reviewer had a bad day and took it out on your hotel, there isn’t much you can do.”

  Nora tapped her fingers on the desk as she thought. “I’m calling from the Tunie Hotel in Piney Woods, Texas and we had someone come in who didn’t have a reservation and blamed it on us. When he found out we couldn’t rent him a room, he became angry. We are pretty sure he put ten one-star reviews on your website. His reviews cite things that the man could have never seen. He’s never been in a single guest room in our hotel, and yet he posted reviews on your site.”